Tips, Tools and Takeaways From the Perugia International Journalism Festival #ijf18

The International Journalism Festival returned to Perugia in April with talks on familiar themes including new media, misinformation, and data journalism, as well as new strands that explored challenges to trust and the #MeToo movement. Storyful’s Rhona Tarrant and Matteo Moschella report back.

Storyful editor-in-chief Mandy Jenkins contributed to five talks, which dealt with social media verification, artificial intelligence, and the ethics of newsgathering, while Storyful’s podcast team were also there to record interviews with some of the festival’s contributors, including one with Omar Muhammad from Mosul Eye, which you can listen to here.

The role of social platforms and journalism was also particularly timely as the festival took place the same week that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg finished testifying before House and Senate committees following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Despite Facebook being a sponsor of the festival, Campbell Brown, FB’s head of news partnerships, pulled out of her planned public interview.

The festival provided other opportunities to talk about the role of social media platforms in shaping the public conversation, including a panel on what Facebook should do for news.

Storyful journalists were also at the festival gathering tips and information about the latest tools, which we have compiled here.

Trust Tools

Trust was a major theme in this year’s festival. New York University professor Jay Rosen returned to Perugia to discuss at length the implications of the relationship between news organizations and the public. You can find a summary of his talk in this Twitter thread and a video of the discussion here.

Trust was also discussed at a panel called Tools for trust: a practical, do-something-now guide, with contributions from Ed Bice, Jennifer Brandel, Rasmus Nielsen, Aron Pilhofer and Storyful founder Mark Little. Each of the speakers chose useful tools to help news outlets build trust. You can find them in this Medium post.

Mandy Jenkins spoke about automating verification and its limitations, along with Sam Dubberley of Amnesty International, Phoebe Arnold of Full Fact, and Tom Felle of the City University of London. You can watch that panel discussion here. The use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom was also discussed at Automation, augmentation and AI in the newsroom and a video of that talk is available here.

Verification Tools

Craig Silverman of Buzzfeed held a number of sessions on verification and disinformation, including one on social verification. He compiled a comprehensive list of verification and digital investigations resources, including tools for analyzing social media profiles, websites and photos. Video of his presentation is available here and his slides can be found here. Silverman also mentioned this list of Bellingcat’s Digital Forensics Tools, which includes satellite and mapping services, tools for verifying photos and videos, websites to archive hyperlinks, and more.

Data Tools

Data journalists Karrie Kehoe of RTÉ and the Guardian’s Caelainn Barr talked about coding for journalists, including where to get started, what languages to learn, and where to find resources. This is a good talk for anyone with an interest in coding or data analytics. Another talk on how journalists can use data can be found here.

Mobile Journalism

Trainer and consultant Corinne Podger presented a practical manual for mobile journalism, including recommendations for equipment and apps. You can find the resources here.

You can find the full line-up of speakers and videos from the festival here.